GPS guided tractors are expensive, but getting GPS tracking into an existing tractor only requires a little bit of tech investment. There are different levels of precision GPS, but one startup company that's done well in this space is FarmLogs: www.farmlogs.com

Their pricing looks quite reasonable at first glance, too. You'd have to have a compelling value-add argument to come out and operate a drone over someone's fields for a day when they can just sign up for satellite crop health images a few times a month from a company like FarmLogs.

Isn't this already a thing? Agricultural equipment based on highly-accurate GPS data, with auto-pilot that's better than what a human can do that makes use of basically every square inch?

Yes. I used to do IT contract work for a company out of Australia that designed and installed these systems. Centimeter precision, prevent things like overspray, thus saving quite a bit of $$ for the farmer.

This was almost 15 years ago.

I work for a company with a division that does this exact thing. And a GPS guided tractor doesn't look any different than a human guided tractor until you get in the cockpit. If there are any large farms around you, chances are they are actually using this already. If they aren't, they'd get more benefit from investing in that than drone overflights.

Out of curiosity, what kind of surveying would a church need (or is it event-related)?

It's not so much surveying as some promo video/website background work.

There's a church camp we partner with that could really, really use some updated footage for their website as well. It's run by an older couple, and the website is insanely basic. We're looking to put together some better promo videos for them to share with the churches they partner with.

Under our CCNA, every contractor must have a GIS sub (or be the prime) and they must have a drone (UAV) pilot on staff (or sub). We also have a pilot on staff (but no drone).

There are a plethora of uses for a drone, and (from my perspective) few if any are related to orthos (or obliques). What we need is LiDAR — whether to track large scale capital projects or something simple like identifying whether speed bumps are to code, drone LiDAR is much less expensive (IME) than terrestrial based systems (where you run into storage issues from the mass points anyway).

I can list out many dozens of things you could do (assuming you want to drop a few grand on a LiDAR rig) that don't even involve you (or a coworker/friend) interpreting the data — you'd be shocked at how many state/local/city governments don't know, for example, how many manholes they have or how big their mass piles are (stuff like crushed asphalt that is reused to fill potholes). Pavement offsets, handicap ramps, curb cuts, street signs, hell, everything in the right of way. Drive down the street later and think about how everything on that road and for probably 20' on a side (beyond edge of pavement) is maintained by a local government, most of whom have no idea what is out there.

Did you know you have to "turn" mulch piles or it catches on fire? True story. There is a geometric shape that prevents this from happening (and saves people on forklifts literally moving mulch all day for their entire.fucking.careers.) — LiDAR can capture the amount and shape of the mulch pile which would allow the engineer to put it into the correct shape.

Under our CCNA, every contractor must have a GIS sub (or be the prime) and they must have a drone (UAV) pilot on staff (or sub). We also have a pilot on staff (but no drone).

Not sure what CCNA means in this context (surely not Cisco), but I think this agrees with what I was saying earlier -- virtually every customer is not going to want raw drone data, they're going to want it processed and analyzed. That means a lot more time and effort and expertise required, and potentially $$$ proprietary GIS software.

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There are a plethora of uses for a drone, and (from my perspective) few if any are related to orthos (or obliques). What we need is LiDAR — whether to track large scale capital projects or something simple like identifying whether speed bumps are to code, drone LiDAR is much less expensive (IME) than terrestrial based systems (where you run into storage issues from the mass points anyway).

From some of the reading I was doing a while ago, the impression I had was that photogrammetry was rapidly catching up to LiDAR in capability, at a significantly lower cost. You get less absolute precision, but you capture so much more data with images than with LiDAR that you can get an equivalent result in the end -- now that systems are computationally up to the task of handling that huge amount of image data.

Or promo images, or even surveying the steeple/roof to see if there's obvious damage without having to have someone to climb up there.

A lot of church websites have been moving to some variety of animated background, and "aerial approach shots" from the parking lot down to the front door are a thing. We've kicked around doing shots that actually go through the front door and into the sanctuary, but the Mavic I have is probably not suited to that - it's a good sized unit unfolded, and pretty heavy. Something like a Spark with prop guards would be better suited to that, but, uh, I just bought one, so I'm good for now.

Tower/steeple inspection is definitely a thing - you can get pretty close to those safely, shoot 4k video of the whole thing, and people can look it over. The FAA regs specifically allow for this sort of thing as well - under Part 107, you're allowed 400' AGL, unless you're within 400' of a structure - then you're good to 400' above the highest point in that 400' radius. I think the Mavic Pro is limited to about 1500' above ground level, so... guess I'm not inspecting the non-existent 2000' towers like Iowa had between Ames and Des Moines?

Under our CCNA, every contractor must have a GIS sub (or be the prime) and they must have a drone (UAV) pilot on staff (or sub). We also have a pilot on staff (but no drone).

... what, exactly, are you referring to/doing? I'm quite confused.

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I can list out many dozens of things you could do (assuming you want to drop a few grand on a LiDAR rig) that don't even involve you (or a coworker/friend) interpreting the data — you'd be shocked at how many state/local/city governments don't know, for example, how many manholes they have or how big their mass piles are (stuff like crushed asphalt that is reused to fill potholes). Pavement offsets, handicap ramps, curb cuts, street signs, hell, everything in the right of way. Drive down the street later and think about how everything on that road and for probably 20' on a side (beyond edge of pavement) is maintained by a local government, most of whom have no idea what is out there.

And, in my area, who probably don't care that much.

Drone Deploy claims to be able to do volumetric measurement of piles from oblique photos, which, if it does what they claim, would eliminate the need for LiDAR for that. I'm interested in the LiDAR rigs you mention, but that's probably not going to be my market any time in the near or mid-term future.

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Did you know you have to "turn" mulch piles or it catches on fire? True story. There is a geometric shape that prevents this from happening (and saves people on forklifts literally moving mulch all day for their entire.fucking.careers.) — LiDAR can capture the amount and shape of the mulch pile which would allow the engineer to put it into the correct shape.

So many organic things catch on fire if left in a large enough pile... There are local piles of sugar beats that I intend to ask about measuring next year - if not for their use, just for my own practice. I'd love to compare my numbers with theirs.

3D VR video so people can walk around it later on so they can see the wedding from different viewpoints.

No... just... no. Weddings do not need full 3D mapping. And I refuse to be "that guy."

Wedding shots would be interesting if one were operating with a good optical zoom and stabilization, but I don't have that (yet). There are certainly units that do it, but this area isn't the type of area that spends insane amounts of money on weddings, near as I can tell. It's a pretty laid back rural area, so I suspect the $100k weddings just don't happen out here. That's a house and a good bit of land.

From some of the reading I was doing a while ago, the impression I had was that photogrammetry was rapidly catching up to LiDAR in capability, at a significantly lower cost. You get less absolute precision, but you capture so much more data with images than with LiDAR that you can get an equivalent result in the end -- now that systems are computationally up to the task of handling that huge amount of image data.

That's been my impression from reading as well. Drone Deploy is the big "cloud image processing" company, and I intend to mess around with them when I have a bit of time - you can do full 3d maps of structures/sites from a combination of nadir shots and oblique shots. Supposedly. They've got a free tier I'll play with when I've got more time on my hands.

Having a blast learning the Mavic Pro so far, though. There's roughly zero documentation on the details of the various flight modes, so of course I'm working on a series of blog posts to better explain operations.

Churches often expect stuff done for free, or at cost. I.e., no payment for labor. So if you were to make a go of it, you could use churches to build a portfolio, but don't expect to make money from them.

Under our CCNA, every contractor must have a GIS sub (or be the prime) and they must have a drone (UAV) pilot on staff (or sub). We also have a pilot on staff (but no drone).

Not sure what CCNA means in this context (surely not Cisco), but I think this agrees with what I was saying earlier -- virtually every customer is not going to want raw drone data, they're going to want it processed and analyzed. That means a lot more time and effort and expertise required, and potentially $$$ proprietary GIS software.

Quote:

There are a plethora of uses for a drone, and (from my perspective) few if any are related to orthos (or obliques). What we need is LiDAR — whether to track large scale capital projects or something simple like identifying whether speed bumps are to code, drone LiDAR is much less expensive (IME) than terrestrial based systems (where you run into storage issues from the mass points anyway).

From some of the reading I was doing a while ago, the impression I had was that photogrammetry was rapidly catching up to LiDAR in capability, at a significantly lower cost. You get less absolute precision, but you capture so much more data with images than with LiDAR that you can get an equivalent result in the end -- now that systems are computationally up to the task of handling that huge amount of image data.

CCNA is consultant competitive negotiation act (government) — it defines how we contract out work.

I want raw data (in most cases) as we have the GIS in house and several data scientists.

Here's the thing with photogrammetry — even if you're not talking about yearly flights (like nearmap who does flights in this area quarterly), every one of those companies I've dealt with requires a complicated use-based fee system. That is hard for governments to budget/approve, unless there's a "not to exceed" quote.

At any rate, I think there's a market for small firms or individuals to pitch themselves to the giants (AECOM, SurvTech, etc) as subs or directly to local governments. YMMV

Under our CCNA, every contractor must have a GIS sub (or be the prime) and they must have a drone (UAV) pilot on staff (or sub). We also have a pilot on staff (but no drone).

... what, exactly, are you referring to/doing? I'm quite confused.

CCNA defines how we contract work. My group has 7 firms on our miscellaneous services contract; each one is required to have a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) division (or a sub contractor) that is able to perform a wide variety of work. Somewhere in the prime contractor or sub contractor world has to reside a drone pilot with LiDAR.

At any rate, I think there's a market for small firms or individuals to pitch themselves to the giants (AECOM, SurvTech, etc) as subs or directly to local governments. YMMV

Yeah, my wife is a LiDAR geographer and, while they still have their own UAVs for LiDAR, photogrammetry etc, they did sell off their plane and plane based sensors and contract the data collection out to others. The sensors are *very* expensive though for that sort of thing.

In terms of agricultural aerial surveys, I just ran across this company: Mavrx.

They use "a nationwide network of fixed-wing aircraft" to collect data -- looks like maybe a temporary mount of a sensor box provided by Mavrx? But again, the real value-add seems to be in the analysis of that data rather than just the collection.

I wonder if automotive lidar units will make lidar mapping sensors a order of magnitude cheaper...

Not sure. But a car is down low at the ground, and cares about the next few hundred feet around it, generally speaking, for the liar system. Longer if there's no traffic at all. Traveling up to, say, 90mph at the high end for the vast majority of people. A light plane will be cruising in the 150-200 mph range. Also from fairly high, probably minimum couple hundred feet.

So, as a direct impact, probably not. But it may make some components even more mass market, so perhaps it might have an effect. Very likely for drone based work, as you can be much lower and slower. So for drone lidar I could see it being equipped with an upgraded car sensor.